Debbie Lenz, Berkeley Unified School District STEM / Makerspace Teacher

Debbie Lenz, Berkeley Unified School District STEM / Makerspace Teacher

Learn about how BUSD middle-school Science, Math, and STEM/Makerspace teacher Debbie Lenz has brought repair into the classroom, and her vision for repair in the classroom. 

Hazel Lutzker and Anna Williams, Berkeley High School Robotics Team

Hazel Lutzker and Anna Williams, Berkeley High School Robotics Team

Anna and Hazel write about how the high school robotics team’s participating in the school district’s community repair events, Fix-it Fests, enables team members to deploy the skills and knowledge they develop for competition to serve the community, address environmental issues, and further the global repair movement.

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Chromebook Rescue Program

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Chromebook Rescue Program

Berkeley Unified School District involves students in repairing and refurbishing obsolete Chromebooks for redistribution to under-resourced students and families in the community.

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Kimberley Schroder, Community Repair Advocate

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Kimberley Schroder, Community Repair Advocate

Kimberley’s workshops demonstrate how repair brings critical thinking, real-world problem-solving, and basic physics concepts into the classroom, while also making space for urgent conversations like caring for the environment. 

Zoe Athanasiou, Marketing Manager at Team Repair

Zoe Athanasiou, Marketing Manager at Team Repair

Zoe explains the thinking behind their Repair Kits: Transform how children engage with science and technology through fixing real objects. Home kits include a strategically broken gadget, tools, parts and repair guides. Classroom kits also include worksheets, lesson plans and more.

Megan Stasi and Debbie Hoffman, primary school teachers in Upstate New York

Megan Stasi and Debbie Hoffman, primary school teachers in Upstate New York

Megan and Debbie recount how experience with their local Repair Café led them to establish a Repair Club, then to develop Fix It Carts to cultivate a repair mindset in their K - 8 schools.

Jimmy Santosa, Maker Teacher and Technology Integration Specialist at Burke's School

Jimmy Santosa, Maker Teacher and Technology Integration Specialist at Burke's School

Burke’s School in San Francisco, California, reports on Jimmy Santosa’s repair unit and repair event in his makerspace classroom. Through hands-on fixing, Jimmy’s third graders learned about how things are made, the value of repair, and repair’s role in environmental sustainability.

Sam Berg, Oakland Unified School District Computer Science Coordinator

Sam Berg, Oakland Unified School District Computer Science Coordinator

Sam writes about Oakland Tech Repair, a program in Oakland Unified School District where student interns have repaired some 10,000 Chromebooks over the last five years. They’ve learned technical skills, earned industry certification, gained workplace skills, and saved the school district $2.4 million along the way.

Julie York, South Portland High School Department Chair: Career Preparation & Technology

Julie York, South Portland High School Department Chair: Career Preparation & Technology

Julie describes the origins and growth of the terrific Riot Refurb program. High school students refurbish and repair scavenged obsolete and broken devices — addressing e-waste, technology equity, technical and workplace training, and more.

Connor Bassolino and the iFixit EDU Team

Connor Bassolino and the iFixit EDU Team

The iFixit Education Team writes that teaching our youth about repair is a critical channel for advancing repair. iFixit offers considerable support for K-12 educators and runs a robust Technical Writing Program for university students.

Ellen McClure, Berkeley Unified School District's Climate Literacy Coordinator 

Ellen McClure, Berkeley Unified School District's Climate Literacy Coordinator 

Ellen writes about a two-part program integrating repair into the middle-school STEM / Makerspace curriculum and hosting community repair events.

Gloria Harwood, Laguna Beach Unified School District's Coordinator of Environmental Literacy

Gloria Harwood, Laguna Beach Unified School District's Coordinator of Environmental Literacy

Gloria writes about hosting Fix It Fests during STEAM class, integrating repair with environmental issues through research, instructional, and hands-on learning, supported by community volunteers. 

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Emily Wanous, Engagement Director for Algalita Marine Research and Education

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Emily Wanous, Engagement Director for Algalita Marine Research and Education

Algalita’s mission is to eliminate plastic pollution through education and research. Emily writes about how the organization has integrated repair into their in-class and afterschool programming. 

Cultivating a Repair Mindset Toolkit in the K - 12 Setting and Beyond

Cultivating a Repair Mindset Toolkit in the K - 12 Setting and Beyond

New pedagogical tools, grounded in repairing broken objects.

Excerpts from the “Toolkit”, a teaching resource developed by a collaboration among Agency by Design Oakland, Maker Ed, and The Culture of Repair Project.

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Fixing Things for the Future

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Fixing Things for the Future

The vision underlying the Student-Led Repair Shop.

Excerpts from Fixing Things for the Future, a handbook published by the Rudolf Steiner School in Munich-Schwabing, Germany.